International News

  Bloomberg China’s overseas shipments held up in April amid recovering global demand and as the threat of a trade war with the US dissipated. Exports rose 8 percent in dollar terms from a year earlier, less than the 11.3 percent increase economists projected in Bloomberg survey Imports increased 11.9 percent, compared with an estimate for 18 percent growth. Trade ...

  Bloomberg Akzo Nobel NV rejected PPG Industries Inc.’s third takeover bid in favor of its own breakup strategy, raising the prospect that the US rival will go hostile with its $29.5 billion offer for the Dutch coating and chemical company. After taking two weeks to evaluate the bid, Akzo Nobel repeated that the proposal is flawed and riddled with ...

  Bloomberg Coach Inc. agreed to buy handbag maker Kate Spade & Co. for $2.4 billion following months of talks, helping the luxury brand cope with an industry racked by deep discounting and sluggish demand. The $18.50-a-share transaction represents a premium to Kate Spade’s price when deal speculation first surfaced in December, but it’s well below the amount investors were ...

  Bloomberg FrontFour Capital Group is seeking board representation at Granite Real Estate Investment Trust arguing that the company is underperforming peers after failing to use its balance sheet efficiently to make acquisitions, a document obtained by Bloomberg shows. The Connecticut-based activist investor said Granite has the capacity to spend as much as C$1 billion on new purchases, according to ...

  Bloomberg German factory orders expanded for a second month as Europe’s largest economy picked up speed. Orders, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, rose 1 percent in March, after expanding an upwardly revised 3.5 percent in February, data from the Economy Ministry in Berlin showed on Monday. The typically volatile reading compares with a median estimate for a 0.7 ...

  Bloomberg Liberty Global Plc lowered its growth target for Europe this year as billionaire John Malone’s cable carrier reported a weaker-than-expected start in the UK. Liberty now forecasts operating cash flow growth of 5 percent for 2017, down from February’s outlook of 6 percent to 7 percent, the London-based company said. The operator lost more customers than expected in ...

  Bloomberg Take China and technology, put them together, and what do you have? One of the best performing exchange-traded funds in the world. The tiny $48 million Emerging Markets Internet and E-commerce ETF, or EMQQ, is up 32 percent this year, putting it among the 30 top returning equity ETFs worldwide. The fund is just a fraction of BlackRock ...

  Bloomberg China’s foreign-exchange reserves rose for a third month in April, beating estimates, as tighter capital controls kept money from flowing out of the country and the yuan was stable. Reserves climbed $20.45 billion to $3.03 trillion, the People’s Bank of China said on Sunday, compared with a median estimate of $3.02 trillion in a Bloomberg survey of economists. ...

  Bloomberg Western Australia will get a A$2.3 billion ($1.7 billion) road-and-rail infrastructure package in this week’s federal budget, the national government said on Sunday. A little over half of the funds will be spent on the state’s Metronet rail project, with the rest to pay for smaller road and bridge projects. About A$1.86 billion of the money will come ...

  Bloomberg On the hilly and tropical island of Hainan, local officials and companies are investing billions of dollars to transform a string of riverside villages into a medical tourism destination. Their aim? To lure wealthy Chinese patients, who might otherwise venture overseas, to this province in the South China Sea known for its beach-front resorts. To do so they ...